Bluetooth Low Energy or “BLE” is a wireless, personal-area network technology designed and marketed by the Bluetooth special interest group. It is used in many industries. Bluetooth Low Energy uses considerably less power and is less costly than classic Bluetooth but has a similar communication range.
Bluetooth Low Energy technology is becoming more prevalent in vehicle systems. It is also now being used with tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS).
In a TPMS, Bluetooth Low Energy transceivers inside a tire transmit Bluetooth Low Energy signals that carry tire pressure information. Those BLE signals are received by a controller on the vehicle. When a controller on a vehicle receives multiple different TPMS sensor signals from multiple different TPMS sensors in different tires, the controller needs to be able to “know” or identify a particular TPMS sensor from which a BLE signal came from so that the controller and the Bluetooth low energy TPMS systems can provide real-time information about actual tire pressure with respect to their physical location on the vehicle.
Tire pressure monitoring sensors in a tire sometimes need to be replaced. Since tire pressure monitoring sensors communicate wirelessly with a controller, the controller needs to know where each sensor is located on the vehicle. Stated another way, when a tire pressure monitoring sensor is replaced, a method of automatically determining where each sensor is located on the vehicle would be an improvement over the prior art.